1.8.5-Doeskin-pantaloons
Brick!Club 1.8.5: A Suitable Tomb Okay, these ironic chapter titles stopped being okay a long time ago Hugo staahp. So Fantine was buried in the free corner of the cemetery which belongs to anybody and everybody, and where the poor are lost. Fortunately, God knows where to find the soul again. Fantine was laid in the shade, among the first bones that came to hand; she was subjected to the promiscuousness of ashes. She was thrown into the public grave. Her grave resembled her bed. Yeah no Hugo. No. Though, I find his use of ‘promiscuousness’ to describe the ashes kind of bizarre. And the fact that there are ashes at all, given that Fantine has been buried, not cremated. I was going to bring up the “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” thing, as perhaps this was what Hugo was talking about, but as it turns out, that phrase is from the Anglican burial service, and I’m 99.99% sure that nobody in this book is Anglican. But Hugo is definitely drawing some weird parallels here with the promiscuous ashes resembling her bed. I almost feel like he’s having a go at her for being a prostitute, but that hardly seems very Hugolian of him, except perhaps in a tragic and ironic way: during her life, she disappeared as a ‘promiscuous’ woman, no-one truly knew who she was, and her greatest tragedy that when life got shit, she had no-one to turn to. And that is exactly reflected in her death. But the promiscuous ashes still weird me out. Other things that confused me: He refused the cross; he bestowed sous on all the little scamps he came across. I always thought there was some evil history back of all that. I was really baffled by ‘He refused the cross’ for a long time, because I was looking for all sorts of deep Christian symbolism, but it turns out to the the Cross he would have received had he accepted appoitment as a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. So that was surprisingly symbolism-free. And then, of course, Sister Simplice lies. She lied. She had lied twice in succession, one after the other, without hesitation, promptly, as a person does when sacrificing herself. I really like the way in which she lies: she doesn’t angst about it, she doesn’t hesistate (which would make it less convincing) she just up and lies straight to Javert’s face. Good on her. Of course, Simplice has already gone through the angst of whether lying is ever okay in the previous chapters, re Fantine and that bloody business with Cosette not actually being there. So I guess she has already come to terms with it, and at least decided that lying by omission as fine. And by extension, she has decided that lying is okay, too. I don’t think we ever see her again, so I’m curious as to whether this lie to Javert represents a shift in her character, or whether it’s a one off. My money’s on one off - she has done her thing, had her inredibly subtle moment of badassery, and now she is going to go on and live her saintly life as though it never happened. I presume she recognises that Valjean is Jesus, and thus a special case? Though I’m there are other people in the world whom we never know about, who are just as Jesus-y as Valjean. Would Simplice lie for them too? It’s very hard to justify a continuation of her black-and-white philosophy after this moment. And she - or at least Hugo - sees it as ‘sacrificing herself’ so it’s almost as though her life has ended at this moment (not, like, in death or anything. Just figuratively.) All her truthful life has been leading up to this one moment where she will lie to do good, which I suppose supports the theory I had earlier that she is not a character but an ideal - she is the ideal of honesty, she has shown how honesty is good, now she’s shown how it’s not always the right road, and it’s impossible to imagine how she can continue as a character or a person from this point. Her existance no longer makes sense. She has been sacrifice on the anvil of Hugolian symbolism. And tomorrow: Waterloo. Commentary Mirrific 'Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust' is from biblical quotes like “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return” and “I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth”. There’s a ceremony within Judaism in which all leaven is burned before Passover and a blessing is said, praying that any left which has not been burnt ‘shall be considered nullified and ownerless as the dust of the earth.’ I’m not saying that Hugo would have been familiar with that last example, but I think there’s definitely a similarity in the way biblical texts see dust and ashes as something inherently reduced and unimportant and that’s what Hugo is working with. In the burial ceremony, after all, it’s used to mean return to the formlessness and insignificancewhich people started as. I looked up the original French text and it’s ‘elle subit la promiscuité des cendres’ , I looked up the verb and it certainly doesn’t suggest any criticism for her promiscuity- it seems to mean more that she undergoes, is subjected to or suffers from it. The word promiscuité it seems, can also mean overcrowding which I think makes more sense. I know little but I’d interpret that phrase as a description of the way she is left, with her remains among spare bones- distributed rather than marked or honoured. Spread out among other nameless ‘ashes’, much as Fantine was in life. This pauper’s grave is another ‘reduction’ of Fantine in the eyes of others, another marker of how unremarkable and unimportant she is seen to be. edit: aphraseremains puts it better than I did http://brickclub.wikia.com/wiki/1.8.5-Aphraseremains: ‘she’s buried in a public grave “resembling her own bed.” Society’s judgment forced her into prostitution, and now that she’s dead that same judgment forces her to share her grave as she did her bed.’ Doeskin-pantaloons (reply to Mirrific) aphraseremains just basically said exactly what I tried to say, but infinitely more eloquently. Yep.